Re: How long can an inode structure reside in the inode_cache?

["Xin Zhao" <uszhaoxin@gmail.com>]

No. I guess I didn't make my question clear.

My question is: Will an inode be released after the last file refers
to this is closed? If so, this could bring a performance issue.
Consider this case: a process open a file, read it, close it, then
reopen this file, read it, close it. For every open,  the inode has to
be read from disk again, which make hurt performance.

So I think inode should stay in inode_cache for a while, not released
right after the last file stops referring it. I just want to know
whether my guess is right. If it is, when will kernel release the
inode, since an inode cannot stay in memory forever.

xin

On 6/10/06, Matthew Wilcox <matthew@wil.cx> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 09, 2006 at 08:10:10PM -0400, Xin Zhao wrote:
> > I was wondering how Linux decide to free an inode from the
> > inode_cache? If a file is open, an inode structure will be created and
> > put into the inode_cache, but when will this inode be free and removed
> > from the inode_cache? after this file is closed? If so, this seems to
> > be inefficient.
>
> how can you possibly release an inode while the file's still open?
> look at all the information stored in the inode, like the length of the
> file, last accessed time, not to mention which filesystem the inode
> belongs to.
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